Great Pyramid

I visited the Great Pyramid of Giza a few years ago while in Egypt on a journalistic assignment of dubious merit and ethical validity.  Little did I know then that I would have to eventually figure out a way to treat what is a venerated artifact of human culture with the cheesy disrespect that I do the rest of the oddities on this site.  Here goes, though.

The Great Pyramid squats (yes, that is exactly the appropriate verb) just on the outskirts of the capital city of Cairo.  Officially, the pyramid is located on the plain of Giza, a plain that was apparently usurped by the city limits at some point in the past.  You know how like on the edges of every major American city, right around where all the strange machinery and warehouses and other industrial eyesores are shoved, there’s usually a giant pile of salt or dirt or factory rock that you can see from the interstate?  That’s approximately where the Great Pyramid seems to be located in relation to the city.  It might seem like I stretched for that comparison, but next paragraph it becomes more apt.  The location’s actually a little disappointing, honestly.  In the much better environment of my mind I had it more exotically placed.  Like you had to jump on camels and fight dust storms and nomads and stuff to get to it instead of just jumping into a taxi with a driver who likes playing American dance hits on his radio.  To further destroy my hopes of the exotic, down a slope a bit from the pyramid was a bunch of unfinished apartment buildings, each one with a rim of rebar jutting up to the sky in the place of top floors.  I was told this was a tax dodge of some sort.  Apparently finished buildings are subject to certain unpleasant (of course) tax assessments, so to get around that you create a fully functioning building and just don’t finish the top floor.  That’s more genius than stacking a pile of rocks to shove royal corpses into.

Anyway, all my life I’d heard of the wonder of ancient architecture that was the Great Pyramid.  I could actually see it from my hotel balcony, and, as you can see, it was definitely picturesque from that vantage.  When I got there, though, I discovered that it’s merely a pile of shaped rock.  Sure, it’s an enormous pile of gargantuan shaped rock, but it’s still something I built with Legos as a kid with no structural design knowledge and no advanced civilization behind my efforts.  What surprised me the most was that the Great Pyramid is not a smooth edifice.  For some reason (probably the fact that my imagination portrays everything as detail-less cartoon drawings in my mind), I thought it was smooth-sided.  Granted, it was at one time, but the effects of erosion and looting had removed its outer stone covering, leaving a triangular pile of what looks a lot like rubble, honestly.  You can still see a limestone cap on one of the less great (apparently) pyramids alongside the great one to give you some idea, though.  I was also under the impression that the stones were fitted together with an obvious-even-to-the-eye-of-a-layman complexity of titanic-jigsaw-puzzle proportions.  Nope.  It’s put together like a layered wedding cake (the big layer goes on the bottom).

Well, all that was my original impression.  But now that I’ve researched it a bit for this article, I feel like an absolute cretin.  For the record, the Great Pyramid is impressively ancient, mind-smashingly complex, giant beyond belief, spiritually overpowering, and unduplicatable even by modern methods.  I don’t really believe all of that, of course, but I though I’d encapsulate every other Internet piece about the Great Pyramid for your benefit.  When it comes right down to it, it’s big and it’s old and it’s a million miles away from you, and that’s enough to make it a wonder.  Go see it.  On the company dime, if you can arrange it.

The only truly unpleasant part of the Great Pyramid experience itself was the souvenir hawkers.  They don’t just come up to you and ask you to buy something.  They ask you to take their picture or they’d take yours and then asked for money.  Or they’d say they had “a gift” for their American friend.  Then, after giving it to you, they’d demand a gift in return.  You had to be absolutely rude.  I mean kick-in-the-tender-areas rude.  Still, I got some souvenir beads for free by not understanding the custom/scam.

Neighboring the Great Pyramid are two other pyramids and some other various death-related structures.  And you probably want to know about the Sphinx.  And the interior of the Great Pyramid.  Sore subjects, those.  Our overly passionate tour guide took so long explaining the giant pile of rocks inside the tour bus that we only were given a long distance view of the Sphinx and not enough time to actually go inside the Great Pumpkin, er, Pyramid.  I snapped a picture of the Sphinx, but loathing any shot that I can buy on a post card, summarily deleted it.  I can also never say I’ve been inside the most famous tomb in the world, and I’m pissed about that.

Which, by the way, is the point of this article.  Tour guides are the worst idea ever.  Somebody please halt their existence.  I want to see everything at my own pace, in my own way.  I don’t need your filter.  If I have questions, I’ll hit the Internet when I get home.  It’s smarter than you.

And there you go.  Once in a lifetime experience…only somewhat tainted. Sorry this was such an unpleasant read.  Next time I’ll try to cut down on the whininess.